{"id":866027,"date":"2026-09-30T15:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T15:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/866027\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T15:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T15:58:09","slug":"toledo-museum-of-art-acquires-landmark-19th-century-photographic-series-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/866027\/","title":{"rendered":"Toledo Museum of Art acquires landmark 19th-century photographic series – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Toledo Museum of Art<\/a> (TMA) has purchased The Seven Words (1898), a groundbreaking photographic work by the American artist F. Holland Day (1864-1933). <\/p>\n

The piece, comprising seven close-up platinum prints in a wooden frame of the artist as Jesus Christ on the cross in his final moments, is the most expensive work of photography the museum has ever purchased. It is also the first by the artist to enter the Ohio museum\u2019s collection. The Seven Words will go on view next year, when the museum reopens after a major reinstallation of its permanent collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the most important photograph that people don\u2019t know about,\u201d Adam M. Levine<\/a>, the TMA\u2019s director, tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cWe can situate it with performance art, and it\u2019s a work that anticipates what will happen with cinema.\u201d<\/p>\n

Day, a leading figure in the Pictorialism movement in the US, created the work near his home just outside of Boston. He staged the photographs with costumes and props, creating a special mirror to attach to his camera so he could see how he looked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a huge theatrical aspect,\u201d says Erin Corrales-Diaz, the TMA\u2019s curator of American art. \u201cDay grew his hair long and fasted, changing his own body for this role. He had gone to see a Passion play in Germany, and it really affected him.\u201d Day had been raised as a Unitarian Universalist, but as he travelled around Europe, he was inspired by the continent\u2019s deeply rooted religious traditions.<\/p>\n

The Seven Words debuted at the first Philadelphia Photographic Salon in 1898 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts<\/a>. \u201cThe work immediately sparked debate,\u201d Corrales-Diaz says. \u201cSome people questioned its legitimacy, as they didn\u2019t like using photography for spiritual subjects. Some liked it. Day showed the work to Boston religious leaders, and 29 out of 30 of them approved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The TMA\u2019s The Seven Words is one of three known originals. (The others are at New York\u2019s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.) It was formerly in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art<\/a>, before it was deaccessioned around the time the museum moved to its current building in 1928. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe artist designed the original frames with the inscriptions,” says Corrales-Diaz, noting that only the TMA\u2019s version and the one in Boston still have these intact.<\/p>\n

\u201cErin has had her eye on this work since she first started working here in 2021,\u201d Levine says of his colleague.<\/p>\n

Corrales-Diaz was first introduced to Day\u2019s work during her graduate studies. \u201cAnd when I did a collection assessment here at the museum, I realised that we have a dearth of early photography,\u201d she says, which led to a conversation with Levine and, later, with Bruce Silverstein Gallery<\/a> in New York. The purchase was agreed to at the Paris Photo art fair in 2023.<\/p>\n

The Seven Words will go on view in Toledo in autumn 2027, when the TMA reopens its reinstalled permanent collection galleries. \u201cWe will feature it in the centre of the gallery,\u201d Levine says. \u201cIt\u2019ll be in a sort of shrine, like a very important carpet at the Victoria and Albert Museum.\u201d He adds that the museum\u2019s conservation team is working on optimal light levels for displaying the fragile early photographic work for the long term.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, we\u2019re so inundated with photography that we forget its original exploratory nature. If sculpture and painting could depict religious subjects, why not photography?\u201d Corrales-Diaz says. \u201cDay made 250 plate studies for The Seven Words, only a dozen of which were successful. It\u2019s one of the most ambitious, radical and beautiful projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see it for the first time, you can\u2019t believe it\u2019s a photograph. You think it\u2019s charcoal with those deep blacks,\u201d Levine says. \u201cIt\u2019s exquisite as a work of both photography and performance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) has purchased The Seven Words (1898), a groundbreaking photographic work by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":866028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,202841,6359,688,22101],"class_list":["post-866027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museum-acquisitions","tag-museums-heritage","tag-photography","tag-toledo-museum-of-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}